Copyrights expire. I think it's something like 75 years after the death of the composer.

There is no difference between bootlegging and music sharing, at least not from the copyright holder's point of view. Bootlegging is selling an unauthorized copy, and sharing is giving away an unauthorized copy. Either way, he does not get paid for his work.

There's no difference from the courts' point of view, either.

afaik that's not true. there are royalties from blank media that compensate for this. for instance if you buy a tape 5 cents goes to artist groups like ASCAP and BMI to cover the anticipated copy of music from the radio.

I can understand the artists wanting to protect their music from illegal downloads. However, the big loser out of it is the record company, not the artist.

Say a CD costs $20. $15 goes to the record company, $5 goes to the artist/s. A big band like Iron Maiden MIGHT have a bit more say in how much they get, but not much. That $5 might have to be split between a group of people, too. I would much rather see them live, where they get a bigger cut of the profit.

originally the record labels were needed to distribute music; they're dinosaurs however today. eventually there will be public forums which help sort out good music from bad but big labels will be gone and music will come directly from artist and groups of artists.

Prima facie. If you have a copy of a musical work, a copy not distributed by the copyright owners, it's pirated.

I know it sounds Draconian, but the interested parties have to draw the line somewhere.

Technically, it is only the act of making the copy or distributing the copy which gives rise to a right of action on the part of the copyright holder. Mere possession is not actionable.

Obviously, if a copy is unauthorized, someone copied it. However, it is the copyright holder who must prove that the defendant in possession did the copying, and as long as physical or online transfer is as widespread as the entertainment industry claims, then possession alone will be insufficient evidence of copying, even under the standards of proof applicable to civil cases.

Thus, there is a degree of practical safety in copying from your purchased CD's to your ipod as long as you keep your mouth shut about how it got there.

At CLE seminars I have attended on this topic, the recording industry execs admit that it is unrealistic to expect a music fan to pay for separate copies of the same song or movie for each electronic device in his home and family. In fact, there is an interesting conflict between the labels producing new music, which want all copying stopped, and the owners of portfolios of older music, who suspect that file sharing might be the most economical way of promoting their portfolios to the younger generation who would not otherwise know their product exists.

In addition, the execs at the labels freely admit that charging $15 retail for the traditional CD is unrealistic when most CDs have one or two really good songs and the rest are crap ( a fact which they freely acknowledge). The presence of ripping technology makes bundling a good single with filler in this manner - and at the full retail price - unrealistic.

While they acknowledge the problem, they are at a loss for a solution.

In any event, it is the execs who decide who they pursue, and not the hired gun lawyers who often (mistakenly) think that by making extreme statements - statements which sound absurd and offensive to the younger generation of potential customers - that they can pander to and flatter their clients.

As in the case of criminal copyright, all of the enforcement cases are "distribution" cases - cases in which some miscreant has made the digital file available for multiple downloads using publicly available file sharing software, and where damages are measured by the actual or estimated number of downloads.

Making a file available for download via publicly available file sharing software is extremely dangerous, while making physical copies one at a time and passing them to a friend is relatively safe, as long as one has discreet friends.

Privately, most intellectual property lawyers will admit that intellectual property law is completely out of control. It has reached a stage where it stifles creative activity rather than encouraging it.

Indeed for the past 40,000 years - ever since the cave paintings at Lasceau - art, music and drama and poetry (committed to memory) has been the property of the people.

Indeed, up until the advent of commercial book publishing in the last 3 centuries, all generators of content wanted their works to be copied and distributed as widely as possible by others due to the extreme difficulty and cost of having works copied by hand. It was only when the book publishers began to lay out large sums to authors in the 18th century, that copyright was created to protect those investments. And it has only been in the last 50 years that distribution of mass entertainment has been concentrated in a few oligopoly hands and our copyright statutes have been corrupted and made oppressive by their lobbying.

But now we are entering a new technological era in which the costs of reproduction and distribution are approaching zero, and it is no surprise that the existence of these technologies should evoke in our young the ancient notion that the elements of our popular culture should belong to the people as they have for thousands of years.

Thank God copyright did not exist back in Shakespeare's time (1594), when the shameless copying, cribbing and borrowing of language, themes and dramatic devices from plays of competing playwrights unleashed the most productive outpouring of creative inspiration in history - all by 6 or 7 individuals.

Ironically, the solution is right in front of the media execs noses, and that is to use the existing technology to implement a system similar to the ASCAP performance royalties where a very small royalty - 5 or 10 cents - is charged per copy, and internet traffic is monitored and bills sent out or accounts are charged, just like toll roads are monitored electronically.

Sadly, the copyright issue is not just about money, but about control of what we see and hear. That is the agenda which blocks the path toward implementing a solution that would make everyone happy. And, of course, that is the agenda that should deeply disturb WNs.

Such a system would create a level playing field in which artists and independent content generators could bypass the labels and the Hollywood film distributors, and get paid for their efforts, thereby destroying the oligopoly power of the labels and the Hollywood distribution system - a system that aggressively censors what you see and hear.

That is the real agenda behind all of these obtuse enforcement efforts.

Yorke said the same thing in a widely-quoted recent interview with David Byrne. His advice to young artists in that piece was, "Don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority." He went on to say that selling the new album, In Rainbows, directly to fans made the band more money from digital distribution than "all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever."